2016 Off-Season Update

[soonertf]

Awesome, thanks!

[Goodell]

Quick update that I added a hopefully helpful feature which totals up your currently winning bids so you get an idea of what kind of money you've already got committed. Hopefully that helps teams to know how much they have available (from team roster page) and how much they've got winning bids currently, before they place another bid to avoid financial problems.

It is located on the right column below how many bids you have left today. The figure is just for cost of currently winning bids in their first year under contract, so how much it should go against your cap this year. If you notice any problems with that calculation, let me know. Thanks!

One other thing to keep in mind with this, though, is that because we're in the off-season not all contracts go toward your available cap space currently. Only the top 51 salaries. So it's not quite a direct match to spending versus available cap space, as some small amount bids may not count toward the cap once they are on your roster directly if they are not among the top 51 salaries.

But it hopefully should still help teams avoid overspending and not letting a lot of bids add up too high on them.

[jerrydlux]

Can you expand on this one commish? It caught me last year and don't want it to happen again.

Thanks

[Goodell]

Can you expand on this one commish? It caught me last year and don't want it to happen again.

I'm going to try to do some enhancements to the team roster listing page when I get some time to make clearer.

RULE OF 51: Go to your team roster. Near the bottom of it is a link for Rule of 51. Click that and it shows all your players on your roster sorted by highest salary and explains: During the off-season teams are allowed to carry up to 90 players through training camp and only the top 51 cap values will count against the cap during the off-season. Once the regular season begins, all players on the 53 man roster will count toward the cap.

On that page you can see what salary level would push a player into the top 51 salaries on your team to count toward off-season cap. You can also see what the 52 and 53rd salaries make (as well as down to the 90th if you have that many or any other specific player you're thinking will make your final 53).

If you search on NFL's rule of 51, lots of pages about it but this sums it up from one of them:

So, if rosters expand from 53 to 90 during the off-season, how can a team possibly stay in compliance with the salary cap? Even at league minimums, the additional 37 salaries would account for somewhere five and 10 percent of a team's salary cap -- and teams can sign those players long before the league picks a final cap number, anyway. This is exactly why the "Rule of 51" exists. Simply put, the "Rule of 51" states that, during the entirety of the off-season from the first day of the league year until the first game, the team's salary-cap status is determined by the 51 highest-value contracts on their roster. This actually makes it easier to be in compliance during the off-season than the regular season, because there are two fewer contracts being counted. And, because the bottom of a team's roster is usually filled with guys making the league minimum anyway, most minor roster changes will only affect a team's cap situation by a few hundred thousand dollars at most.

[jerrydlux]

Thanks!

[soonertf]

I think this may have been brought up, but not sure. Another issue I think should get looked at next year is low annual salaries with extremely high sign bonuses. In my opinion it's unrealistic and then when the player gets traded (which I would assume would be the strategy to structure it that way) they are worth 10x more on the market because competing team now has an all-pro player for small change per year. I think the annual salary should be equal or great than the annual signing bonus hit. So if the signing bonus is $20M over 5 years then the floor for the annual salary should be $4M/yr.

[Onyxgem]

I think this may have been brought up, but not sure. Another issue I think should get looked at next year is low annual salaries with extremely high sign bonuses. In my opinion it's unrealistic and then when the player gets traded (which I would assume would be the strategy to structure it that way) they are worth 10x more on the market because competing team now has an all-pro player for small change per year. I think the annual salary should be equal or great than the annual signing bonus hit. So if the signing bonus is $20M over 5 years then the floor for the annual salary should be $4M/yr.

I disagree players are all about the guaranteed money and that is what the SB is, they don't care as much for anual salary because they can be cut at anytime and get nothing so they are all about the upfront SB they get

[soonertf]

I think this may have been brought up, but not sure. Another issue I think should get looked at next year is low annual salaries with extremely high sign bonuses. In my opinion it's unrealistic and then when the player gets traded (which I would assume would be the strategy to structure it that way) they are worth 10x more on the market because competing team now has an all-pro player for small change per year. I think the annual salary should be equal or great than the annual signing bonus hit. So if the signing bonus is $20M over 5 years then the floor for the annual salary should be $4M/yr.

I disagree players are all about the guaranteed money and that is what the SB is, they don't care as much for anual salary because they can be cut at anytime and get nothing so they are all about the upfront SB they get

True but this league doesn't work like NFL. When a player gets traded in NFL they re-negotiate deals. There is no way a top notch player is going to play for $1m a year regardless what he got paid in the past. Then perhaps the SB should go with the team during trade. This is one of the reason IMO that we see so much money during FA.

[Jared A]

We should just incorporate a rule that the SB can only be half of the value of the contract. The rest has to be in salary.

[soonertf]

That was my initial thought. At least something to think about as we continue to try to improve on the system.